


What do I do when my love is away? (Are you sad because you're on your own?)

by Sihena



Series: Tomorrow is a long time [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Dog death, F/M, angst and a happy ending, clarke finds a dog, post s4 spec fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 19:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11042625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sihena/pseuds/Sihena
Summary: “You lost your pack, huh buddy?” The dog set it’s head down on its paws and looked up at her with those wide unevenly colored eyes. Clarke sighed. “Yeah, me too.”Or, Clarke finds a dog while wandering alone.





	What do I do when my love is away? (Are you sad because you're on your own?)

Day 417

It was day 417 of being alone when Clarke heard a whining in the bushes to her left.

Clarke tensed her hand on her rifle as a nose poked out of the bush, followed by a brown paw, and then a whole shaggy head, one eye white the other brown. They stared at each other, Clarke couldn’t tell how long, before the dog stepped fully into the clearing.

At least, Clarke thought it was a dog. It could just as easily have been a wolf or a hybrid of the two. It was massive, tall enough to knock her over at the waist and wider than her body. Perhaps she should have been more concerned that it was feral or dangerous, but there was something in its eyes that looked somewhat relieved to see another living creature that wasn’t a bug. Clarke knew the feeling.

 _What would Bellamy do?_ she thought to herself _._ Which was unfortunately a very easy question to answer. If he found a stray dog at the end of the world, he’d take it in and give it a home. So when it butted its nose against her hand, instead of turning away, she smiled and rubbed her hand behind it’s ears. In theory people had been domesticating dogs for centuries before the first bombs went off, it couldn’t be that difficult, could it?

“You lost your pack, huh buddy?” The dog set it’s head down on its paws and looked up at her with those wide unevenly colored eyes. Clarke sighed. “Yeah, me too.”

…

Later that night she sat on the hood of the rover with her radio. The dog was barely visible against the tree line, it’s dark curly fur blending into the night. If not for the patches of white and grey on its body, she wasn’t sure she’d have seen it all.

It had been like that all day, hanging out in the peripheries of Clarke’s vision. They stood in orbit, drawn together but kept apart. Clarke supposed that, like her, the dog had adjusted to a solitary life and didn’t know how to return back. But this was enough for Clarke, in this moment. Watching it run through the trees and chase after birds, if only from afar, was enough to make Clarke smile more genuinely than she had in a long time.

“Hey Bellamy,” she said, clicking the radio on, watching the birds crescendo into the sky. “I know I checked in this morning, and I don’t mean to seem clingy,” she said with a wry smile. “But today’s been a really good day and I…I wanted to share it with you.” She laid her head back on the rover and looked at the sky, trying to spot the ark among the stars. Sometimes she convinced herself she saw it, glinting faintly. “I wandered around part of the four percent of the world that decimated and I found a dog. Or a wolf, or something. Regardless of her ancestry, she’s here and for the first time since we parted ways I’m not alone—” she closed her eyes. “I’m not alone.”

 

Day 423

Over 400 days spent alone, and Clarke had gotten used to it. She ran entirely on her own schedule, waking up and sleeping as she needed to. Hunting, eating, and cleaning as she needed to. She managed to get a lot done in a year, fixed up a rover, maintained a little garden, scavenged and reclaimed old cloth, furniture, or tools from wherever she could. There was a simplicity to a life built for one that Clarke appreciated. But that simplistic lifestyle required rethinking now that there was another living thing involved in her daily process.

“Involved” was perhaps overstating it; for the most part, the dog stayed out of her line of sight, wandering within a mile of wherever Clarke was. It was also maybe an exaggeration to say that Clarke wasn’t alone anymore, because there were several times when the dog would disappear for hours. But each time it left, it came back. Occasionally with a large cockroach dangling proudly from its jaws. And yet, neither the dog nor Clarke seemed inclined to get any closer; they both wanted company, but neither of them knew how to handle companionship yet.

It took a post-apocalyptic thunderstorm to change that.

Post-apocalyptic weather differed from pre-apocalyptic weather dramatically and violently. The ash cloud had raised global temperatures, sea levels rose, and the weather was unpredictable and fierce. When a thunderstorm came rolling through the green zone, it rolled sharp and heavy, leaving trees uprooted in the sloshing mud.

The dog was off chasing birds and Clarke was working on a map of the green zone in her notebook when the rain turned from annoying to worrisome. Clarke raced to the rover, hiding her notebook under her jacket as the rain and wind gathered alarming momentum. Before she closed the doors, over the pounding of rain on the rover’s roof Clarke could hear the dog howling over the wind. Clarke could barely see through the sheets of water streaming from the sky. Squinting, she the faintest flash of movement a field away.

Clarke didn’t hesitate. She threw her notebook into the safety of the rover and riffled through her bags for anything to entice the dog to listen to her, to trust her. _Save who you can today, Clarke_ . _Even wild dogs large enough to kill you._ She ran back through the storm, with a makeshift tarp rain slicker and a handful of rat jerky.

Clarke was terrified that in its agitated state the dog would resist her advancements and knock her to the ground, but it remained trembling where it was until she was but a few feet away. At that point she kneeled in the slick mud, shivering in the cold rain, breathing a little breathlessly from the adrenaline.

“Hey buddy,” she held out the jerky, hoping beyond hope that the dog could smell it through the rain. It bared its teeth at her, so she did what she thought Bellamy would do, and inched closer and closer to it, gentle as she could go all things considered.

She waved the jerky a little desperately, “come on, come _on_. _Yes_ ,” she smiled with relief as it creeped forward. “Yes _that’s it_ , _come on_.” She ripped off a piece and stretched her hand out to the dog, relieved when it snatched the jerky up immediately. “Now, just follow me.”

Once to the rover, all it took was Clarke opening the doors for the dog to leap into the back of the rover. Clarke crawled in after it, moving her bags off the now damp floor, trying to wrap herself and the dog in what little blankets she had. They sat together, dripping onto the cold metal until the space warmed with their body heat. The dog looked at her expectantly, but Clarke shook her head and held out her empty hands. The dog had already finished off the last of what she had. It licked the crumbs off her hands and she smiled, rubbing its ears. Rat jerky she could resupply. This stupid, beautiful, giant dog was less easy to replace. It took another few minutes for the dog to stop shivering (from storm anxiety, Clarke presumed, since the shivering worsened and eased in time to the thunder). All the while Clarke rubbed it’s side absently, weaving her fingers through it’s long and slightly tangled hair.

Soon, it closed it’s eyes, and Clarke gently laid herself next to it, hesitantly laying a hand on its side. She shifted as close as she could to feel it’s warmth, to feel its heartbeat thrumming rhythmically against her palm. It was a feeling to adjust to. But soon they were both out, and Clarke got the best night of sleep since the rocket left, even as the storm rattled the rover like a cage.

 

Day 512

Within a hundred days, it was snowing on the ground, and the last green spot on earth turned a glistening white. For the past few days, it had been too cold to wander outside for anything more than checking traps and gathering water. And yet still, even in the freezing cold, Clarke would head out with her radio and a sense of hope.

“I’m keeping the dog. And I’ve been thinking about names. You have more experience in this department than I do. She has your hair—or something like it. It’s curly and dark. She has patches of white and grey too. Which, maybe you have too” she laughed “you are kind of an old man now aren’t you?” she frowned. Ages and birthdays were slipping her mind. “What are you? 23? 24? I suck at birthdays to be perfectly honest with you. I can only really remember mine and my mom’s. And my dad and Wells of course. But that’s because I had those days reinforced in  me since I was young. It never really came up with everyone else, or with you. I’ll add it to the list,” she sighed. “In our defense, we had more important things to focus on.” she closed her eyes and laid down on the rock she was perched on. “But now...there’s nothing else.”

 

Day 513

The next day, she sat on a rock outside in the snow again. The air was still dry and the wind was biting, but the way the sun shone on the hushed valley made it glisten with something fresh, something alive. It was warmer today, and some of the snow was melting.

“I know you’re probably wondering why I waited this long to name a dog. But I think there was a part of me that was scared that if I named it, if I got attached...The worst things happen to people when I fall in love with them. Shot, stabbed...gone. But I’m tired of being afraid to love her.

“I think I’m going to call her Cerberus,” Clarke mused, her train of thought leading her to mythological names, because her mind would always take her back to him. “Guardian dog of the underworld, because this place looks like hell. And she’s a protective little demon sometimes, did I tell you how she reacted when a mouse snuck into the rover? I probably did. I tell you almost everything now,” she paused and watched her breath cloud in the air. “Almost everything.”

Her finger rested on the radio button but couldn’t bring herself to press it. Eventually, she pushed off the rock and trudged through the snow back to the rover.

 

Day 600

The snow returned again a few times, but each time it came weaker and weaker. Clarke felt the earth thawing slowly below her feet, ready for spring to come. She started exploring the world again, which was when she stumbled on the tunnels. The tunnels that led Clarke to the strangest thing she had discovered so far: another human. A young girl.

This discovery shook Clarke’s world such that for the first time since she was left behind, she almost forgot to radio. After a whirlwind of a day, Madi went to sleep in the rover with Cerberus, who was such a softy with her, and Clarke snuck out with her radio. She really didn’t want to disturb Madi’s sleep (the poor girl looked exhausted, and Clarke could only imagine what it would be like to be so young, so alone), but the thought of being one step further from their sleeping forms was too much. So she sat on a log nearby, with the moon high in the sky and the stars bright and everywhere. No people meant no pollution, just stars.

“Bellamy,” Clarke said, holding the mic close to her mouth, eyes wandering between the rover and the night sky “I found someone. Another person. That’s why I’m whispering actually, she’s gone to bed in the rover. Her name is Madi, she’s so young, and Bell...she might be the best thing I’ve seen in my life. Finding Cerberus was such a gift, but meeting Madi...it’s changed things. Cerberus was a little reluctant to expand the family at first, but now she won’t leave her side. I’m a little jealous, to be honest,” Clarke said, grinning. “And I think Madi loves having Cerby—that’s what she calls Cerberus—to hold onto at night. She’s so strong during the day, so fierce and brave for someone so young. She doesn’t deserve this,” Clarke  “She survived because she’s a nightblood too. Which gives me hope that there might be more, maybe some other young kids. Maybe I’ll have 100 little delinquents on my hands just like old times. But that’s the future and right now…

“Right now I miss you like hell. And not just—not just for the usual reasons. But because I think you’d like her. And you have experience with raising stubborn girls and Madi—” Clarke laughing softly. “She’s stubborn as hell.” She held the radio against her heart, trying to find the right words. “I’m so scared that I’m going to fuck this up Bell. I can take care of Cerberus, she’s just a dog. She can hunt and fend for herself. But I can’t leave Madi alone. She survived on her own, but looking into her eyes today...she needs me. And I—fuck, Bell. I need her. I think...I think that I might kind of know why you did everything you did when we first landed. I would do anything to save her.

“I’m sorry that you can’t see Octavia. I can only imagine...well, anyway. Come down soon to see your sister again. And to meet Madi.

“I hope you get to meet her someday soon.” Clarke held the radio near her mouth for a moment longer, but couldn’t find any more words. So she put it away and crawled back into the rover, where Madi and Cerberus were snoring lightly. Clarke’s chest felt so full from the words she couldn’t find; it took her a while to fall asleep that night.

 

Day 916

It was hard getting out of the rover after the burial, but Clarke forced herself to set up the radio that night, breathing in the cool night air while Madi slept in the rover, alone for the first time.

“Bell—Cerberus—” Clarke choked out a sob. “Cerberus died today. She was old and with the radiation...It was probably cancer. Maid is a wreck and I don’t know how to—I miss her, Bell. I never thought I could miss something more than—fuck. She was too good for this rotten planet.

“I can’t do this today Bellamy. I don't want to go find food. I don't want to hunt rabbits. I don't want to do anything but lay here on this rock and talk to you. But I have to march on, because of Madi but...fuck. I wish you were here. You’d know what to say. I wish she was here,” she wiped her hand at her eyes, and choked out the words that burned her throat “I’m tired of everyone I love leaving me.”

 

Day 940

“Madi and I went to the island today. I couldn’t go with Cerberus because the radiation outside of the green zone is still so high, so this is my first time back since you left,” she paused, looking at the strangely soft pillow she held on her lap, and smiled at Madi’s sleeping form, laid out across the bed next to her. “I’m going to steal the pillows and blankets for the rover I think. But other than that, there’s not much here. The mansion is nice but I’d rather be on the mainland. There’s no food here, and everytime I look up and see the remains of that fucking radio tower I feel like shit. I wish I knew that it worked. I wish I knew that you were alive, and knew that when I talk to you, that you can hear me.

“I play that moment back in my mind a lot. The moment Raven told us the tower was a one person job. More times than not, I’m glad she did. You would have died out here without the nightblood. And I would much rather believe you’re alive, believe that I saved you and our friends, than watch you die. But other times...other times when I’m not thinking logically, when I’m laying in the rover trying to fall asleep at night I pretend like Madi and I are just waiting for you to come back from a hunting mission. Like we’re back at Arkadia, or the Dropship, and we’re not alone on a dead planet, we’re just alone in a room, waiting for you.

“I don’t have a lot of regrets. Because all things considered, I’m so fucking happy that you and Raven and Monty and Harper and Octavia and my mom and...I’m so happy you’re alive. And not alone. I just wish I could witness your happiness. The idea of seeing your smiles someday is the only thing that keeps me going at this point. I...Good night Bellamy. Sweet dreams.”

 

Day 1825

“Hey Bellamy,” Clarke said, bouncing on the soles of her feet, unable to keep herself from constantly scanning the skies. “As of today it’s been five years year now. Sometimes I swear it’s only this routine that keeps me from believing that you’re real at all. The more time I spend in this wasteland, the more its hard to believe that everything hasn’t always been this way. Somedays I can’t believe that I ever grew up in space. Or lived at the dropship. Or Mount Weather. Or in Polis.

“I miss Lexa a lot. We existed in a world of clans and alliances and war. And I wish I could spend just one more day with her, without the weight of the world pressing down on us. And I miss Wells too. And my father. And Finn, and Lincoln, and Jasper. The list goes on and on and _on_ . But, you know, the one person who has been on my mind _a lot_ in the past few days has been Gina. Which is weird, I know. I didn’t really know her at all. Just heard about her from Raven and you. I guess she reminds me of everyone else I didn’t know, who have died since we landed. Whose deaths hang around in the smoke of this godforsaken planet. I’d like to think that I’d like her. Gina, I mean. I know you did. I wish I could’ve met her, just to see…

“Anyway, Madi is getting older and I swear she’s giving me grey hair. To ward off feeling old I dyed my hair with some berries, just a few red streaks. And I let Madi cut my hair off, which she’s been wanting to do for a while. It’s kind of ridiculously short, so if you come down soon I just want you to be prepared for that. Hopefully it’ll grow out to my shoulders by the time you get here. But I’ll make sure to keep re-dying the streaks every once in awhile so you can see it in all it’s ruby red glory.”

“Clarke!”

Clarke turned to see a dark haired girl jump out of the rover and run to her, grabbing her arm excitedly. “You started without me!” Madi protested.

“You could use the sleep,” Clarke said, rubbing her thumb over the dark circles under Madi’s eyes. “Or maybe more iron.”

“Claaaaarke,” Madi said pushing her hand away and reaching for the radio.

“Did you want to say hi, or did you want to pout?”

Madi made to grab the radio, but Clarke still had a little bit of height on her and held it out of her reach. Madi tugged on her arm “I’m sorry, but it’s today isn’t it? I was looking at the radiation monitor and it’s yellow so that means that they’re coming down—”

“They _could_ come down,” Clarke corrected gently. She couldn’t help but smile at Madi’s excitement, despite her own pooling anxiety “But we haven’t heard from them yet,” Clarke turned to stare at the sky up above again, as if some sign would appear to quell her worries. “It might not be today.”

“Can I say hi anyway?”

“Yeah, yeah of course,” Clarke said, sitting on a log where Madi immediately plopped down too. Clarke handed the radio off to her.

“Hey Murphy. And Emori, and Raven, and Bellamy, and Monty, and Harper, and Echo,” Madi said, squinting at the sky, as if she didn’t really quite believe that so many people could be above the clouds. “I still don’t know if I believe that you’re totally real—”

“Hey!”

&ldquo—but I really really hope you are. And I really really hope you come down. It’s safe now. I promise. And I think it would be nice to meet you all. Uh, especially you Murphy,” Clarke did her best not to audibly snort (Madi’s crush on Murphy was inexplicable and it made Clarke question her storytelling techniques, but Clarke thought it was adorable and hilarious in its own way) “If you can hear me. I think it’d be cool for you to come down now. I know Clarke would like it. And I’d like to meet you. So yeah.”

She handed the mic back to Clarke and announced that she was going back to bed. Clarke watched her go, and then spoke lightly into the microphone.

“That was Madi, being Madi as always. I agree with her, it’d be pretty nice to see you all. Even you Murphy,” Clarke smiled. “To sum up what I was trying to say earlier, I’ve lost a lot of people, and I’d be grateful to not lose you all too,” Clarke stared at the rosy sky, at the land that grew gradually more colorful as the sun rose over the landscape. “Happy five year anniversary Bellamy. You can come down now.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what the terrain/biodiversity/weather of the earth would look like after two apocalypses tbh. I'm hoping some biodiversity was preserved in the green zone, hopefully enough for a dog, some rats, and some birds :)
> 
> Title from "With a Little Help From My Friends" by the Beatles 
> 
> Find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/heda_skaikru) and on tumblr [here](https://hedaoftheskaikru.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it!


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